Because of increased application complexity and the need for highly available and scalable systems, IT enterprises have turned to various types of distributed computing systems for their IT infrastructures. Common distributed computing system configurations include cloud computing systems, clustered computing systems, and grid computing systems. Typical distributed computing systems may involve the exchange of various communications between individual computing systems that make up the distributed computing system. Such communications generally come in the form of requests from client systems and responses from servers.
In typical client-server architectures, the processes that handle client-server communications may perform certain common functions apart from exchanging requests and responses. For example, before a client system can send a request to a server, a connection must be established, the client may be required to authenticate with the server, and the connection may be secured (e.g., encrypted). Additionally, after the request is sent and a response is received, the connection may be closed, which may include connection cleanup by both the client system and the server.
In situations where the time used to exchange the request and response is short, the overhead of the common functions may be responsible for the majority of system resources consumed. Accordingly, the instant disclosure addresses a need for systems and methods that handle client-server communications in a more efficient and effective manner.